Promotional Design for York’s Bachelor of Design Program (DESN)
Kesha Upadhyay
Design Rational
My postcard designs are based on the tagline “Blurring the line between art and technology” portraying what future students may hope to expect when enrolling in York University’s BDes program. I aimed to visually communicate three different ways that the design program incorporates both art and technology. The first design incorporates a paintbrush on a screen with code illustrating the course called Visual Interaction Design which all first-year students need to take. The course require traditional ways and techniques of art such as sketching rough ideas but also introduces coding (HTML, CSS, Advanced CSS, and JavaScript), ultimately combining both art and technology. The second design represents Michelangelo’s painting The Creation of Adam but with one of the hands pixelated illustrating the “blur” between traditional art and technology (pixels). I wanted to showcase a famous painting which is considered traditional art but incorporate a pixel effect to one of the hands depicting the overlap of technology. The hand that is not blurred is meant to represent a human hand )(traditional art) and the pixelated hand is meant to represent the digital world through the glitch effect. The third design illustrates an iPad with a finger touching the screen resulting in a burst of colours.I wanted to showcase a technological device such as an iPad but consider a twist to adding a burst of colour representing paint splatter. In conclusion, each of my final postcard designs portray the tag line “blurring the line between art and technology” by uniquely showcasing what future students who may be considering applying to the BDes program at York University.
PROCESS
Week 9: Brainstorm Stage
This week I brainstormed on Miro with my peers on what target group to focus on and created an empathy map on Miro. What we wrote about relating to the project and the details is in the shared Miro board (linked above). I filled out a creative brief of what exactly the aim of my designs was going to be and made up two personas with similar but different personalities who would be interest in applying to York's BDes program. In the creative brief, I talked about: company background, project summary, objective, key features, benefits, target audience, target emotions, and project voice. By filling out a creative brief and making up personas, I understood further what the demographic I would be targeting towards. For this project, the target audience is high school students aged 16-18. I explored keywords and developed about 45 different ones on Miro (linked above). I narrowed it down to 4 keywords (creativity, art, design, future) which I felt could best relate to what I wanted my designs to best suit my postcard campaign. I brainstormed tagline options on Miro (linked above) and narrowed it down to 2: (1) Where ordinary is never good enough (2) Blurring the line between art and technology. I brainstormed the overall theme and visual development as well on Miro (linked above). I created a visual survey > mood board on Figma (linked above). I did preliminary sketches relating to my two chosen taglines varying in ideas but taking a conceptual approach.
Week 10: Visual Development
This week I decided on the final tagline: Blurring the line between art and technology. I produced more visual sketches relating to the chosen tagline and focusing on 3 different concepts (1 concept for each of the 3 postcards). Concept #1: Blurring the line between art and technology through coding. Concept #1: Blurring the line between art and technology through interaction. Concept #1: Blurring the line between art and technology through visuals. Stemming from the preliminary visual sketches, I produced 3 B&W digital comps of what I wanted my postcards to look like. For postcard #1, I wanted to illustrate a hand with a paintbrush "painting" the screen of code. The sub-tagline: Functional design and how design requires structural/logical ways of thinking. For postcard #2, I wanted to illustrate an interpretation of Michelangelo's painting The Creation of Adam but by adding a twist to one of the hands. I wanted to keep one of the hands as a human hand representing traditional art as the medium used was paint and it was created during the Renaissance. For the other hand, I wanted to create a pixelated version which represents the digital world. The sub-tagline: Expressive design and how design require expressive ways of thinking. For postcard #3, I wanted to illustrate an iPad with a finger touching resulting in a burst of colours. The sub-tagline: Innovative design and how design requires attentive and original thinking. All 3 of my postcard design ideas relate back to my original chosen tagline: Blurring the line between art and technology. I wanted to showcase what future students hoping to apply yo York's BDes program would expect to learn and do in terms of course material. In our first year so far, in relation to the postcards, we have learned basic coding (HTML, CSS, Advanced CSS, and Javascript), have studied traditional art and design theory but have also applied our knowledge digitally, and have explored with visuals. In preparation for the motion graphic video, I created 2 storyboard for postcard designs #1 and #2.
Week 11: Develop 1 Concept
This week I developed final concepts by adding colour to my B&W digital comps from the previous week. I wanted to make these look as the finals as much as I could so I would not have to change much the following week. I aimed to put as much effort as I could and created the final coloured comps this week. The aim of my postcards was to showcase to students what to expect in terms of course work when applying to York's BDes program. The tagline alongside the 3 designs varying in concepts portray what future students may expect to do as discussed. I aimed to showcase what students could hope to expect to do and learn when enrolling and taking the core design courses in the program. I created a 10-second rough-cut of the motion graphic video this week using Google Slides animations and Screencastify to screen record.
Week 12: Final Refinements
This week I added final refinements to my digital comps. I did not change much from the previous week as I was pretty satisfied with the work I did and wanted to modify slight things. For design #1, I added colour to the inside of the hand, removed the outlines, and played around with the placement and alignment of the chosen tagline. For design #2, I blurred the pixelated hand more (on Photoshop), removed the outlines, and played around with the placement and alignment of the chosen tagline. For design #3, I removed the hand on the left which was holding the iPad, removed the outlines, and played around with the placement and alignment of the chosen tagline. I decided to remove the black outlines from all the designs as the background was already black and I felt this did not work well together. By removing the black outlines, the designs looked much more simplified and minimalistic. I asked peers for feedback/suggestions/critique and was told that my designs looked better without the black outlines too. I wrote the design rational for the final 3 designs. I created mockups for my final postcard designs using FreePik (hence the copyright in the background). For the premier gift mockup, I decided to place my final designs on buttons. Finally, I uploaded the final designs on Behance with the design rational.
Week 10: Visual Development
This week I decided on the final tagline: Blurring the line between art and technology. I produced more visual sketches relating to the chosen tagline and focusing on 3 different concepts (1 concept for each of the 3 postcards). Concept #1: Blurring the line between art and technology through coding. Concept #1: Blurring the line between art and technology through interaction. Concept #1: Blurring the line between art and technology through visuals. Stemming from the preliminary visual sketches, I produced 3 B&W digital comps of what I wanted my postcards to look like. For postcard #1, I wanted to illustrate a hand with a paintbrush "painting" the screen of code. The sub-tagline: Functional design and how design requires structural/logical ways of thinking. For postcard #2, I wanted to illustrate an interpretation of Michelangelo's painting The Creation of Adam but by adding a twist to one of the hands. I wanted to keep one of the hands as a human hand representing traditional art as the medium used was paint and it was created during the Renaissance. For the other hand, I wanted to create a pixelated version which represents the digital world. The sub-tagline: Expressive design and how design require expressive ways of thinking. For postcard #3, I wanted to illustrate an iPad with a finger touching resulting in a burst of colours. The sub-tagline: Innovative design and how design requires attentive and original thinking. All 3 of my postcard design ideas relate back to my original chosen tagline: Blurring the line between art and technology. I wanted to showcase what future students hoping to apply yo York's BDes program would expect to learn and do in terms of course material. In our first year so far, in relation to the postcards, we have learned basic coding (HTML, CSS, Advanced CSS, and Javascript), have studied traditional art and design theory but have also applied our knowledge digitally, and have explored with visuals. In preparation for the motion graphic video, I created 2 storyboard for postcard designs #1 and #2.
Week 11: Develop 1 Concept
This week I developed final concepts by adding colour to my B&W digital comps from the previous week. I wanted to make these look as the finals as much as I could so I would not have to change much the following week. I aimed to put as much effort as I could and created the final coloured comps this week. The aim of my postcards was to showcase to students what to expect in terms of course work when applying to York's BDes program. The tagline alongside the 3 designs varying in concepts portray what future students may expect to do as discussed. I aimed to showcase what students could hope to expect to do and learn when enrolling and taking the core design courses in the program. I created a 10-second rough-cut of the motion graphic video this week using Google Slides animations and Screencastify to screen record.
Week 12: Final Refinements
This week I added final refinements to my digital comps. I did not change much from the previous week as I was pretty satisfied with the work I did and wanted to modify slight things. For design #1, I added colour to the inside of the hand, removed the outlines, and played around with the placement and alignment of the chosen tagline. For design #2, I blurred the pixelated hand more (on Photoshop), removed the outlines, and played around with the placement and alignment of the chosen tagline. For design #3, I removed the hand on the left which was holding the iPad, removed the outlines, and played around with the placement and alignment of the chosen tagline. I decided to remove the black outlines from all the designs as the background was already black and I felt this did not work well together. By removing the black outlines, the designs looked much more simplified and minimalistic. I asked peers for feedback/suggestions/critique and was told that my designs looked better without the black outlines too. I wrote the design rational for the final 3 designs. I created mockups for my final postcard designs using FreePik (hence the copyright in the background). For the premier gift mockup, I decided to place my final designs on buttons. Finally, I uploaded the final designs on Behance with the design rational.
What I liked most about this project was the freedom to create creative interpretations of how we wanted to promote York University's BDes program. I aimed to showcase the potential courses future students would expect to take place when applying. From experience, I wanted to showcase what we have learned so far in the BDes program. I portrayed coding (as we learned basic HTML, CSS, Advanced CSS, and Javascript), traditional paintings with a twist by integrating a glitch/blur effect (to depict the digital world), and visuals. I had a lot of fun designing these postcards as the guidelines were more broad for this project and we had more freedom with how we wanted to go about promoting the BDes program.
Challenges I faced during completing this project was keeping in mind how exactly the postcards would inform future students about the BDes program. I found it difficult to decide on a specific style as I did not want to make my designs too simple/abstract but did not want to be too literal either. I wanted to go for more of an illustrative style which would visually communicate the course material of what future students could expect to learn about when applying.
